As more authors jump to prominence from small presses, and as conversations around them become louder – publishers such as And Other Stories and Civil Coping Mechanisms Press – a question that may be worth asking is: are big publishers unwilling to take risks any more? Increasingly, “risky” authors, those who’ve been rejected over and … More Small Publishers Take Big Risks
Author Peter Marabell relates that the best advertising is sometimes the easiest. The one more thing is my business card. Best advertising money I’ve spent. I stick one in every book sold at a signing. People took cards yesterday, too. Some of them told me they preferred digital. It was good to have the cards … More Best Advertising
A VERY interesting article on the future of printed texts in the classroom. Not all students are created equal, and not all classes on the subject need to be run in the same way. There needs to be a way where each instructor and his class can custom design the ideas, authors and contents that … More The Future of Textbooks
Chosen by DBC Pierre and The Guardian: 1. To generate early inspiration and feel part of a club: Daily Rituals by Mason Currey Writing can make you feel like a weirdo if you don’t already – but feeling like a weirdo is useless psychology for the job, hence this little book. Mason Currey has carefully … More Best Books for Writers
Insights from NYT bestseller Bob Mayer: Here are five things I believe authors need to be aware of and plan for: 1. Another dramatic loss of shelf space. This impacts the mid-list author. Reports of Barnes and Nobles demise might be premature, but the reality is, even in its stores, its swapping books out for … More Shelf Life, Amazon Imprints, Going Indie
… after a shot in the dark. A father who tried self-publishing the bedtime story he made up for his daughters has landed a surprise order of 2,000 copies from Virgin Atlantic to help children sleep on night flights. Stephen Holmes, who works in data management, has been telling his daughters Madison and Ella a tale … More Dreams Come True …
“In this hugely effective debut, Tom Carr sheds keen illumination upon a regional inventory of killers, kooks, cutthroats and the aggressively unhinged. The tales are horrific and humorous by turns — grisly, goofy, poignant dispatches expertly summated by a skilled veteran reporter who’s no stranger to the back stairs habituated by a true sleuth. Story … More Super Summer Reading
For better or worse, writers and readers live in an age of the million-dollar book deal. The Big Five publishers (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster) increasingly gamble on massive book advances in hopes that they might put out one of the biggest hits of the year. … With small, strange … More Indie Presses Are for Readers
Author Nick Cole invents a realistic reason for AI dystopia and HarperVoyager balks. Cole moves to Amazon. In the excerpt below, Thinking Machines is the name of his AI creatures. These Thinking Machines are watching every show streaming on the internet. One of those shows is a trainwreck of reality television at its worst … More Too Hot for Harper
Here’s the news: Author Earnings asserts that on Amazon’s bestseller lists, indie self-published titles account for more than twice the number of Big Five titles. “What has changed,” the report tells us, “is the degree to which Amazon’s overall Top 20 bestsellers, and even the overall Top 10, have come to be dominated by self-published titles from … More Self-published Move to the Top
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